State's Highest Security Prison Is Prepared For The Worst

SOMERS — Most prisons are built for those who can't live lawfully in the community. The state's newest prison is built for convicts who can't live lawfully in other prisons.

Northern Correctional Institution will be home to the 300 worst male convicts in Connecticut -- those who assault correction officers and other inmates, who instigate riots or who prove to be escape risks.

They will be sealed inside unpainted cement cells with solid metal doors for 23 hours each day. They will be fed through slots in their cell doors. Even the slot is locked shut once the tray is passed through. Northern, above all else, represents a commitment to the correction department's staff, said Leo Arnone, director of correction Region I, which encompasses Northern and five other prisons in Somers and Enfield.

It is a threat hanging over the system's 13,400 male inmates who might contemplate attacking a guard. It is the punctuation mark to a 10-year prison building program in Connecticut that relied too heavily on barracks-style housing of convicts in medium-security prisons. These dormitories were rife with extortion, gang recruitment and assaults. Inmates, not staff, controlled them.

It cost $44 million to build Northern, a higher cost per cell than any of the state's other 26 prisons and jails. It is the only prison to carry the department's maximum security rating of Level 5.

`Worst-case scenarios'

Each cell measures 7 by 12 feet. Putting two inmates in a cell is common throughout the system, but will not be done at Northern. Convicts here will live in isolation. They can sit at a stainless steel desk that measures 3 feet across by a scant 18 inches deep. They can peer through a slim rectangular window that measures 3 inches wide by 34 inches long.

``Some views are better than others. None are very good,'' said Warden David May, who expects to receive his first wave of convicts by month's end. Most will come from the administrative segregation unit at nearby Walker Reception and Special Management Unit in Suffield. That unit held 91 inmates last week.

All cell windows look onto three layers of fences that surround this cement edifice. The fence closest to the building is 14 feet of steel mesh that curves dramatically inward at the top, like a baseball backstop, making it virtually insurmountable. The middle barrier is a taut wire fence electrically charged to activate spotlights and alarms when touched. The outside fence is a traditional chain-link, roughly 12 feet high, with gleaming spirals of razor wire at its base and top. Armed guards will patrol outside these layers, 24 hours a day.

The security inside is more ominous.

Inmates will live in two-tier circular pods of 50 cells each, with a cockpit-like guard ``bubble'' in the middle. The cells are further divided into clusters of as few as three, but no more than six; a locked steel door separates the clusters from the next unit of cells. Containment is the operative word here -- of noise and of people.

The guard in the bubble has a control panel for opening doors, and a ladder for escaping to the roof through a self-locking door if, by some remote chance, convicts penetrate the bubble encased by two-hour riot glass. The glass is so named because one can allegedly pound on it for two hours with a sledgehammer before it gives way.

``We don't anticipate it ever being taken over, but this place was built for worst-case scenarios,'' said May.

`No touchy-feely stuff'

Most convicts will leave their cells only for three showers, five one-hour blocks of recreation and a 30-minute visit each week. Before a cell door is opened, however, the inmate must first crouch with his back to the door, arms behind him, and poke his hands through the feeding slot so a guard can shackle his wrists.

Once the inmate is handcuffed, he will be told to lie face down on his cot. A guard will then enter and shackle the inmate's ankles, and fasten the handcuffs to a waist band to restrict all movement of the arms.

The small shower room will have a door with a similar slot in it. The inmate is locked in the shower, maneuvers his hands and wrists through this slot, and the cuffs are removed. They are replaced when the inmate is finished showering and dressing.

Handcuffs and leg irons remain on during ``recreation,'' which consists of an inmate shuffling around a small cement yard the shape of a pentagon, with enough room to park five compact cars, creatively. It is surrounded by tall cement walls and roofed with metal mesh. The fresh air offers the only semblance of outdoors. There is a cement alcove where convicts may stand if it's raining or snowing.

Cement is the dominant decor here. Even the visitation ``stall'' consists of a thick cement cylinder serving as a stool and a cement counter where a convict might rest his elbows. He will speak through a telephone to his visitor. Bulletproof glass separates them.